From The President's Desk

Dear Members,

One more year to work as President of FPBAI as I was selected unopposed along with the other office bearers during 57th AGM held on 17th December, 2011 at Le Meredien, New Delhi. I take this opportunity to thank one and all for their support, cooperation and confidence in me and my team of office bearers. AGM was attended by over 135 members. Apart from the proceedings of AGM, we showcased our new website which was very well appreciated by the members. We would be happy to receive any suggestions to improve it further. Awards were presented to Ms.Kalpana Shukla, of K.W.Publishers Pvt.Ltd. for Best Publisher(English), Dr.Manish Arora of Universal Law Publishing Pvt. Ltd. was given Best Contribution award and Mr. T.R.Ramamnujam of M/s.T.R.Publications Pvt.Ltd.,

Chennai was given Best Booksellers Award.

We have had six executive committee meetings during my last term and one of the meetings was held in Bangaluru recently during Bangalore Book Festival. I would like to thank Mr.Balram Sadhwani, President,

Bangalore Book Sellers Association for his kind invitation to hold executive committee meeting in Bangaluru and also for the hospitality. We organized a Seminar in Bangalore on "Book Piracy" and "e-books Sales and Marketing" which was very well attended and appreciated by the local members.

Earlier this year in May we organized a seminar on Exports which was very successful as it was attended by over 25 participants and most of them were young and new comers to book trade/publishing.

In September, I was invited to speak on "Where Digital Book are Headed" during the conference on Publishing Next in Goa organized by Mr.Leo Fernandes of Cinamonteal Publishing House. My paper which was presented there, is published in the latest Newsletter of FPBAI and is also published in our website. The conference was very well attended and many topics were discussed. During this conference I found that "Self Publishing" was an emerging field and I was able to meet many independent publishers and found it very encouraging interacting with them.

In September, 2011 FICCI in collaboration with FPBAI organized a seminar on PubliCon - 2011 "The Business of Publishing" which was very successful and well attended. I was invited to speak on "National Book Promotion Policy". Members will be able to view video clippings of this topic on our website soon. We are grateful to Shri Kapil Sibal, Hon'ble Minister of Human Resource Development for his vision to frame National Book Promotion Policy for the benefit of authors, publishers, booksellers and the readers and researchers. We are also thankful to various other government agencies for their support and cooperation.

20th New Delhi World Book Fair is approaching fast and I hope that many us will be there and eagerly looking forward to this gala event. On 12th December, 2011 we had a meeting of publishers, booksellers,and retailers where we discussed about the onslaught of online book stores and how they are affecting retailers and the very existence of bookshops is at great risk. Many suggestions were made to overcome this problem and one of the suggestion was that Publishers should not allow online bookstores to allow more than 10-15% discount and publishers should offer them new titles only after 3-4 days of book release. No doubt the online bookstores are going to stay, but we need to work in such a way that we all co-exist and take advantage of the new technologies.

We shall come back to you soon with our agenda for 2012.

I wish you all a very Happy New Year.

With kind regards,
Sincerely,

Kailash Balani

President